Chase Trumbull graduated as a theater major from Smith College last Sunday and has been diligently hunting for a job in lighting design. Trumbull, 22, who lived in Westport with his family before attending Smith, plans to stay in Northampton, Mass., as he broadens his job hunt from the Boston area to across the United States.

"I applied for eight jobs in the past week and a half. Unless you know a lot of people, there are only a few places where jobs get posted and things get snapped up pretty quickly," Trumbull said. "I'm trying to send a resume every day or couple of days." He will start a paid summer job soon at the New Century Theater in Northampton.

"A lot of people are in similar situations, especially those graduating with liberal arts degrees," Trumbull said. He said he hopes to find a job as an assistant or electrician for a theater company and remains optimistic. "It takes a lot of patience and faith. No matter what happens, everything will be okay. We'll get jobs."

Backlog of young unemployed

When the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, many of this year's graduates had already started college. While the job market has improved slightly, the Class of 2014 is competing against a sizable backlog of the unemployed from the past few graduating classes. Many college graduates also need to start repaying student loans after a six-month grace period. The Oakland, Calif.-based Institute for College Access & Success estimated that 61 percent of Connecticut college students took out student loans averaging $27,816.

"Our economic recovery in Connecticut has been slower than the U.S., but steady. We forecast labor markets will grow on this pace at least through 2015. I expect the short-term outlook for college grads will be similar -- improving, but not at record levels," said Andy Condon, director of research at the state Department of Labor in Wethersfield. Connecticut's jobless rate for men ages 20-24 at all education levels fell to 12.1 percent in 2013 from 17.9 percent in 2011, while for women ages 20-24 the jobless rate fell to 8.7 percent from 15.5 percent.

`Savvier' students

The Connecticut Labor Department forecast the biggest jobs growth from 2010-2020 for those with at least an associate's degree is for registered nurses, teachers except special education, general and operations managers, accountants and auditors and securities, commodities and financial services sales agents.

"They are getting savvier," he said. "Recruiters are impressed to meet freshmen at our career fairs."

Petro said UConn student attendance at its job fairs was stronger as 33 new recruiters visited campus. Over the past few weeks, UConn awarded 5,400 bachelor's degrees and 1,475 master's degrees, among others.

"Incoming students for the past two years had a mission that they needed to capitalize from the get-go," said Cathleen Borgman, director of Fairfield University's Career Planning Center. She said it appeared more job offers were made early to Fairfield graduates and "it's across the board, not just STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). There have been offers made in accounting, consulting, finance, a lot more companies including smaller companies."

Engineering success

The university last Sunday awarded diplomas to 902 undergraduates, 30 doctor of nursing practice degrees and 375 master's degrees.

Petro said engineering graduates had a "high success rate with multiple offers" and business graduates drew offers from the Big Four accounting firms, consulting, banks and financial services. He said UConn's liberal arts and sciences majors were offered jobs in actuarial science, market research, human resources, client relations and sales. Nursing and education also drew employer interest.

Sacred Heart University's Class of 2014 included 837 undergraduates and 774 graduate students and those who accepted offers drew an average of three job offers from mostly health care, accounting, financial services, media/entertainment and technology companies, spokeswoman Funda Alp said.

Nationally, the job market remains sluggish. "The weak labor market has been, continues to be, very tough on young workers," said a "Class of 2014" report by the Washington think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The report stated while young graduates usually see higher rates of unemployment than the broader population in weak job markets, "the Great Recession and its aftermath is the longest, most severe period of economic weakness in more than seven decades."

While a college degree helps a job hunter, it doesn't guarantee a good salary. In 2013, the DOL reported that 260,000 U.S. college graduates earned the U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less, down from a recession-peak of 327,000 in 2010 but more than double the 127,000 in 2007 at the recession's start.

The EPI said the 2014 real inflation-adjusted average hourly wages of a young college graduate is $16.99 (roughly $35,340 annually), down from the recession start of $18.24 in 2007 and flat with the $16.59 in 1989.

Former Weston resident Sarah Steinharter, 23, graduated in May 2013 from Wake Forest University with majors in business and enterprise management and French. After interning at travel-related companies in Australia, the city of Paris and in Connecticut, she interned last summer at the London office of an American financial services company and was hired after graduation to work in its London credit department in a deal-coordination position.

Connections trap

While job-hunting, Steinharter said she fell into the trap of focusing on job postings where she had a contact "or knew a friend of a friend of a cousin. The role I ended up taking was one of a few where I took the most traditional route and applied online without speaking to anyone internally, received an interview, and then a job."

She briefly considered a career in the travel industry but "after three internships in three countries, I realized this was not for me, but I never would have known this if I hadn't tried. ¦ (College is) the trial period for the real world."